"Believe" this game sells consoles; 22% of 360 shoppers check out Halo 3

I started to grasp the magnitude of Halo 3 when I was watching FutureWeapons on the Discovery Channel, and Richard Machowicz all but gave a demo of the Banshee. Yes, in addition to branding a soda, and getting into arts and crafts with a massive diorama depicting the battle of John-1 1 7; they also bought out all of the advertising for a marathon run of the one show that

I started to grasp the magnitude of Halo 3 when I was watching FutureWeapons on the Discovery Channel, and Richard Machowicz all but gave a demo of the Banshee. Yes, in addition to branding a soda, and getting into arts and crafts with a massive diorama depicting the battle of John-1 1 7; they also bought out all of the advertising for a marathon run of the one show that only a fan of First Person Shooters could love. As gamers salivate in anticipation of this year’s biggest game, how has Halo 3 impacted the larger Xbox 360 market?

Back in February, we showed how Halo 3 had already started to drive gamers’ decisions to purchase the 360. Since then, the game’s influence has only grown. From November 2006 to August 2007, we assessed the degree to which Xbox 360 shoppers also considered various games at online retailers.

In August, over 22% of all online Xbox 360 shoppers also visited Halo 3 pages at online retailers.

Amazingly, through all of 2007, an average of nearly 16% of Xbox 360 shoppers also considered Halo 3. If this is any indication of sales, Halo 3 could have played a role in the sale of nearly 300,000 consoles in 2007 alone.

While this overlap fluctuates monthly, the general trend is rising. With the game now tangible, this may be the tipping point for the 360 this holiday season.

Halo 3 comes in three different packages: Halo 3, Halo 3 Limited edition, and $130 Halo 3 Legendary edition which comes with a number of "collectible" accessories. What’s really interesting is the breakdown by package. The chart below shows the percentage of total Halo 3 shoppers who showed interest in each of the three Halo 3 packages.

Nearly 40% of all shopping interest was devoted to the Basic Halo 3 package.

The twice-as-expensive Legendary edition received nearly 32% of traffic.

People appear to have gone to either extreme. The mid-priced Limited edition received a scant 22% of interest.

In the last 4 months, Halo 3 pre-order pages received over 2.1 million visits.

Halo 3 is the first of a few games Microsoft is using to sway shoppers to their platform this holiday season. The marketing behind the game almost seems like a message to the past; to the early adopters who waited for days in line for a product that was prone to hardware failure and lacking a decent launch-lineup: "believe""¦that all those problems will be someday be worth it.